by Dave Eggers
The second of the early-morning regulars enters.
‘Valentine, mon amour! How are you?’
This is Nancy Strazzeri, an elegant woman in her mid-fifties with short white hair and a blood-red velvet sweatsuit. She once brought me coffee cake she had made herself.
‘Fine, thank you,’ I say.
‘Broken any hearts lately?’ she asks while handing me her card.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say.
I swipe her card, replacing Matt Donnelley’s face with hers.
‘See you in an hour, mon frere,’ she sings, and is gone. Her face, a tired face with eyes that speak of past mischief, remains.
Nancy, the road to Lodwar was dotted with potholes and cut everywhere with cracks that had become small winding canyons. Noriyaki did his best with the truck, which he had driven only once before, and never this far. It was a stick shift, and the trucks he had driven around Kakuma had automatic transmissions. I had never been in the front seat of any vehicle, and tried to remain calm, though Noriyaki’s control of the vehicle seemed tenuous.
The passage of time was slow as we turned a corner and saw the obstacle. There was a large mound of dirt in the right lane. It should not have been there. There was no reason that that dirt should be there.
Noriyaki yelled in Japanese, swerving left to avoid it.
The truck tilted heavily, and bodies flew past my window. The players in the truckbed were thrown onto the road. Noriyaki swerved again, now to the right, but he had lost control. The truck tilted onto two wheels.
Noriyaki again screamed a word I didn’t know. Screams from the truckbed. Three more players were tossed. The truck groaned and slid slowly off the road, down the berm, and rolled onto its roof. The breaking of glass, the squeal of machinery. It was not fast, our decline, but it was irreversible, and when it was clear that the truck would crash, Noriyaki threw his arm across my chest. But then he was gone.
The truck came to a stop on its side. I was still inside the cab, and through the broken windshield I could see two boys lying on the dirt. I. looked over to Noriyaki. He had fallen out of the truck, and when the truck rolled, it had landed on his chest. Blood left his head like water. There were fragments of glass in his cheek and forehead, shards everywhere around him, pink with his blood.
—Oh! he said, and then closed his eyes.
—Noriyaki! I said, my voice far weaker than I could have wished. I reached through the window and touched his face. He did not respond.
Now there was someone on my side of the truck, pulling at me. It was then I was reminded of the rest of the world. That I was alive.
I was helped out of the truck, and stood for a moment. There were now people all around the road, new people. Kenyans from another truck, a food truck. They had seen the accident. The basketball boys were strewn everywhere, all over the road and embankment. How many were dead? Who was alive? Everyone was bleeding.
—Dominic! a boy’s voice said.—What happened?
This boy seemed to be fine. Who was he? My limbs felt loose, disconnected. My neck was sore, my head felt detached. I stood under the sun, my eyes stinging with sweat, everything so heavy, and I watched.
—One, two, three! The Kenyans were moving the truck off of Noriyaki. They rocked the truck one way and then the other, and when the truck was tilted away from Noriyaki, one of the men was able to slip in and push Noriyaki out. The truck was dropped again where Noriyaki had lain. The men carried Noriyaki up to the road, his body limp, blood no longer leaving his head.
That was what I saw before I fell.
I was loaded onto the food truck and taken to Kakuma. I awoke on the road.
—He lives!
—You see this, Simon?
—Ah, good! Good! We were not sure about you, Sudan.
—You would have died if we had not been driving by.
—Stay awake, boy. We have an hour to go.
—Pray, Sudan. We are praying for you.
—He doesn’t need to pray. God spared him today.
—I think he should pray. He should say thanks and keep praying.
—Okay, Sudan, pray. Pray, pray, pray.
Two more people, a couple, enter the club. I do not remember their names. They smile at me and say nothing, his hand on the small of her back. They are in business attire, and they hand me their membership cards. Jessica LaForte. Malcolm LaForte. They smile again and they are gone.
I look at the face of Malcolm LaForte, wishing I had swiped them in reverse order. His wife is dark-eyed and dark-haired and her face is soft and forgiving, but he is a severe-looking man. An impatient man. Impatient men have made my life much more difficult than it might otherwise have been. He gives me a terse smile he thinks passes for sincere, and enters the club.
Malcolm LaForte, in the camp, I was dead. For many days, among many hundreds of people, I was considered deceased. The casualties reported from the truck accident varied hour to hour, day to day. At first, all aboard the truck were presumed killed. Then the basketball players themselves began arriving at Kakuma, and it became clear that none of these young boys had died. Everyone agreed it was miraculous.
But I was dead, most were certain. Valentine Achak Deng was dead.
Gop and his family heard this and they wept and screamed. Anyone who knew me cursed Noriyaki, they cursed Kakuma and basketball and the broken Kenyan roads. My coworkers at the UNHCR were despondent. The Napata Drama Group held a ceremony in my memory, led by Miss Gladys with speeches from Dominic and Madame Zero and all the members. Tabitha wailed and did not leave her bed for three days, rising only when she heard that I was not, in fact, dead.
I woke up at Lopiding Hospital. There was a nurse with her hand on my forehead. She said something to me while looking at her watch.
—Do you know what happened? she asked.
—Yes, I said, though I wasn’t sure.
—None of your friends are dead, she said.
At this I was relieved. I had a memory of Noriyaki looking grey and covered with glass, but this woman seemed to be saying that he had survived.
—But the Japanese driver is dead, she said, standing.
She left and I was alone.
Noriyaki’s family! I thought. Oh, Lord. This was too much. I had seen senseless death, but it had been so long since I had seen something like this.
I was responsible for Noriyaki’s death. It was boys like me who had forced the creation of Kakuma. If there was no Kakuma, Noriyaki would not have come to Kenya. He would be at home, with his family and fiancée, living a normal life. Japan was a peaceful country, and people from peaceful countries should not be involved in the business of countries at war. It was absurd and wrong that this man should come so far to die. To die while bringing some refugees to play basketball? To die because he wanted to see me leave the camp? It was a wretched thing my God had done this time. I had a low opinion of my Lord and a lower opinion of my people. The Sudanese were a burden upon the Earth.
Having seen the death of Diana mourned around the world, I reserved some expectation that Noriyaki’s death would provoke tributes and despair throughout the camp, throughout Kenya and the world. But I heard of nothing of the kind. I asked the nurse if there had been television reports about the accident; she said she had not seen any. The aid workers at Kakuma were distraught, to be sure, but there was no worldwide outpouring, no frontpage obituaries. Within two days of his last breath, Noriyaki’s body was taken to Nairobi, where he was cremated. I do not know why.
—What are you doing here?
A man was standing over me, his face silhouetted by the sun through the low window. He stepped closer and it was Abraham, the maker of new legs and arms. Immediately tears fell down my face. I had been in the hospital for days, in and out of sleep.
—Don’t worry, he said.—Your limbs are intact. I’m here only as a friend. I tried to talk but my throat was too dry.
—Don’t talk, he said.—I know about your head, the drugs they have you
on. I’ll just sit here with you for a while.
And he did. He began to sing, quietly, the song he had hummed that day, long before. I fell back asleep and did not see him again.
I was at the hospital nine days. They tested my head, they examined my hearing and vision and bones. They put stitches in my head and bandaged my limbs. I slept much of each day, and Tabitha left while I stumbled through the fog of my painkillers.
I suppose in the back of my mind I knew the day was fast approaching, but I was not certain until a note was delivered to me one day after breakfast. I do not know how Tabitha was able to find a pink envelope in that camp, but somehow she did. It even smelled like her. The note was written in English; she had employed the help of a Kenyan writing instructor, I suppose, to make the note as formal and eloquent as possible.
Valentine my dear,
I was so worried when I heard about the accident. And when I believed that you perished on the roadside, I was devastated. Imagine my joy when it was not true, when I knew that you had survived and would be fine. I tried to visit you, but they were not admitting people who could not claim to be your caretakers. So I waited for news of your health, and was encouraged when I knew you would make a full recovery. I am so very sorry that Noriyaki has passed away. He was well loved and will surely go to Heaven.
As you know, my flight could not wait. I am dictating this letter just hours before my plane leaves for Nairobi. My heart is heavy, but we know that I had to leave. This camp cannot tell us where we should live. I could not miss the opportunity to fly away. I know you understand me on this point.
I will see you again, my dear Valentino. I don’t know what our lives will be like in America but I know that we will both be successful. The next time I see you we will both drive cars and meet at a clean and expensive restaurant.
Your loving friend,
Tabitha
A stream of new people bursts into the club at ten to six. First, two women in their seventies, both wearing baseball caps. Now a very large woman with corkscrew hair shooting in every direction, followed by a pair of younger women, sisters, very fit and with their hair in ponytails. There is a pause in the flow, and I look to the parking lot, where I see the gold sun rising in the reflection of the cars. A white-haired man enters the club, walking with his body angled forward. He is the last of the bunch: Stewart Goodall, with close-set eyes and a crooked smile.
Stewart Goodall, can you imagine a letter like that? Everyone I knew had left for a place expected to be paradise many times over, and I remained behind, and now even Tabitha was gone, having slipped away while I slept.
After a week recuperating, I went back to the Wakachiai Project. Because it was a two-person staff, if I did not return quickly, the project would wither. Most of Noriyaki’s possessions were still there—his letters, his sweatsuit, his computer, his picture of Wakana in her white tennis dress. I was not prepared for the reality of being there without him. I put all of his things in a box but still the room spoke his name all day. I knew I would have to leave very soon.
I was charged with finding a replacement for Noriyaki. The Japanese wanted to continue funding the project, and to keep it running, I had to pick a new officer. I interviewed many candidates, most of them Kenyan. It was the first time a Sudanese refugee had interviewed a Kenyan for a job at Kakuma.
I found a Kenyan man named George and he became my assistant. We continued to plan activities for the youth of Kakuma, and soon after my return we received a large shipment of soccer balls, volleyball uniforms, and running shoes from Tokyo. Noriyaki had been trying to find the funding for this shipment for months, and now seeing all of it spread around the office, so many new things—it was so difficult.
The doctor checked on my progress once a week. I was sore in my bones and joints, but the symptoms the doctor had worried about—dizziness, blurred vision, nausea—did not occur. It was only the headaches, of varying severity throughout the day, that affected me, and they were worst at night. I lowered my head to my pillow and as I did, the pain grew. My friends and family checked on me and watched me warily. I had lost ten pounds at Lopiding, so they gave me extra rations and anything they could find to distract me—a handmade chess set, a comic book. When I did fall asleep, I fell deep, and my breathing was hard to detect. More than once I woke up to Gop poking me in the shoulder, making sure I was alive.
After a month, my body had recovered and mentally I had reached a certain numbness that was hard for me to define or for others to detect. Outwardly I performed my duties at work and at home, and my appetite had returned to normal. I alone knew that I had decided on a change. A few days earlier, I decided definitively, though against the advice of virtually everyone, to return to Sudan to rejoin my family. There was no reason to stay at Kakuma, and remaining there was a daily punishment. It was God and the earthly powers that be saying this was the best I deserved, that this life was good enough for the insect known as Valentine Achak Deng. But Tabitha’s letter had ruptured something inside me, and now I did not give a damn about Kakuma, about my duties, about what was expected of me. I decided I would go first to Loki, then buy my way to Marial Bai. I had enough money, I surmised, to bribe my way onto an aid flight. I had heard of this being done before, and with less money than I had already saved.
Gop inadvertently reinforced my way of thinking about leaving the camp. He had been making many remarks at that time about imminent peace in the south of Sudan. He pointed to many positive developments, including the 2000 Libyan⁄Egyptian Joint Initiative on the Sudan. Though it was later invalidated, it provided for the establishment of an interim government, power-sharing, constitutional reform, and new elections. And just a few days earlier, President Bush had designated John Danforth, a former senator, as Presidential Envoy for Peace in the Sudan. He would, they said, certainly see that peace was necessary, and with American might, make sure it was achieved.
—You look better today, my new assistant George said one day. We were on our way to replace the nets on the basketball courts, and George was wearing a whistle tied around his neck. He loved to wear his whistle.
When I told George my plan to leave, he almost punched me. He raised his hand to me and then stopped, his whistle in his mouth.
—Are you crazy? he said.
—I have to.
Now he blew the whistle in my face.
—Sudan’s still a war zone, man! You said yourself that the murahaleen were still active in your region. How are you going to fight them? Are you going to read to them? Write a play for them? No one in the world, not one person in southern Sudan, would leave this place to go there. And I’ll personally see to it that you don’t. I’ll tie you up with these nets. I’ll cut off one of your feet.
I smiled, but George had not changed my mind. People still went back to Sudan. Strong young men like me could do so, and I was older and smarter than I was when I attempted my recycling. Staying at Kakuma was an untenable idea. Everyone would see me as having been rejected—four thousand are taken to America and I was deemed not worthy. It would be too difficult to live with that stigma. George blew his whistle again, this time to get my attention.
—Listen. I bet Wakachiai will hire you full-time if you want it. You’ll make ten thousand shillings a month, be able to eat at the UN restaurants, drive one of their Land Rovers. Pick a nice bride and live pretty well here.
—Right, I said, and smiled.
—Don’t be crazy.
—Okay, I said.
—Don’t be stupid.
—I won’t, I said.
—This is your home, he said.
—Fine.
—Accept it and thrive here.
I nodded and we installed the new nets.
Six-thirty is when the real crush begins at the Century Club. The rooms become crowded, the exercise machines are all occupied, people become tense. The members are determined to work out and it is frustrating to them when they cannot do it on the timetable they have planned. I ch
eck in a dozen people within a five-minute span. They are all working people, professional-looking people. They smile at me and some exchange a few words. One middle-aged man, who has told me he teaches high-school history, asks me how my classes are coming. I lie and tell him they’re all fine.
‘Headed to college?’ he asks.
‘Yes sir,’ I say.
The last woman of the rush is Dorsetta Lewis, one of the few African-American women who works out at this club. She is about forty, very appealing, at once confident but with a shy way of carrying her head, a perpetual rightward tilt.
‘Hey there, Valentine,’ she says, and hands me her card.
‘Hello, Dorsetta,’ I say, and swipe it. In her photograph, she seems to be in the middle of a belly laugh. Her mouth is open wide, all of her teeth visible. I have never heard her laugh and have occasionally thought of trying a joke on her.
‘Still hanging in there?’ she asks.
‘I am, thank you,’ I say.
‘All right then,’ she says, ‘that’s what I like to hear.’
She disappears into the locker room.
The truth is that I do not like hanging in there. I was born, I believe, to do more. Or perhaps it’s that I survived to do more. Dorsetta is married, a mother of three, and manages a restaurant; she does more than hang in there. I have a low opinion of this expression, Hang in there.
The club goes quiet again for a spell, and instinctively, I find myself checking my email. There is a note from my brother Samuel.